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CHAPTER XVIII

October was dying, its russet tints slowly merging into grey. Thin mists, laden with fine specks of soot, had penetrated into the 'Rosebud.' Victoria, in her black business dress, under which she now had to wear a vest which rather killed the tip-drawing power of her openwork blouse, was setting her tables, quickly crossing red cloths over white, polishing the glasses, arranging knives and forks in artistic if inconvenient positions. It was ten o'clock, but business had not begun, neither Mr Stein nor Butty having arrived.

'Cold, ain't it?' remarked Gertie.

'Might be colder,' said Bella Prodgitt.

Victoria came towards them, carrying a trayful of cruets.

''Ow's Beauty?' asked Gertie.

Victoria passed by without a word. This romance had not added to the popularity of the chairman's favourite. Cora and Gladys were busy dusting the counter and polishing the urns. Lottie, in front of a wall glass, was putting the finishing touches to the set of her cap. The door opened to let in Mr Stein, strapped tight in his frock coat, his top hat set far back on his bullet head. He glared for a moment at the staff in general, then without a word took a letter addressed to him from a rack bearing several addressed to customers, and passed into the cash desk. The girls resumed their polishing more busily. Quickly the night wrappings fell from the chandeliers; the rosebud baskets were teased into shape; the tables, loaded swiftly with their sets, grew more becoming. Victoria, passing from table to table set on each a small vase full of chrysanthemums.

'I say, Gladys, look at Stein,' whispered Cora to her neighbour. Gladys straightened herself from under the counter and followed the direction of Cora's finger.

'Lord,' she said, 'what's up?'

Bella's attention was attracted. She too was interested in her bovine way. Mr Stein's attitude was certainly unusual. He held a sheet of paper in one hand, his other hand clutching at his cheek so hard as to make one of his eyes protrude. Both his eyes were fixed on the sheet of paper, incredulous and horror-stricken.

'I say, Vic, what's the matter with the little swine?' suddenly said Lottie, who had at length noticed him.

Victoria looked. Stein had not moved. For some seconds all the girls gazed spellbound at the frozen figure in the cashbox. The silence of tragedy was on them, a silence which arrests gesture and causes hearts to beat.

'Lord, I can't stick this,' whispered Cora, 'there's something wrong.' Quickly diving under the counter flap she ran towards the pay box where Stein still sat unmoving, as if petrified. The little group of girls watched her. Bella's stertorous breathing was plainly heard.

Cora opened the glass door and seized Stein by the arm.

'What's the matter, Mr Stein?' she said excitedly, 'are you feeling queer?'

Stein started like a somnambulist suddenly awakened and looked at her stupidly, then at the motionless girls in the shop.

'Nein, nein, lassen sie doch,' he muttered.

'Mr Stein, Mr Stein,' half-screamed Cora.

'Oh, get out, I'm all right, but the game's up. He's gone. The game's up I tell up. The game's up.'

Cora looked at him round-eyed. Mr Stein's idioms frightened her almost more than his German.

Stein was babbling, speaking louder and louder.

'Gone away, Burton. Bankrupt and got all the cash… See? You get the sack. Starve. So do I and my vife… Ach, ach, ach, ach. Mein Gott, Mein Gott, was solls..'

Gertie watched from the counter with a heightened colour. Lottie and Victoria, side by side, had not moved. A curious chill had seized Victoria, stiffening her wrists and knees. Stein was talking quicker and quicker, with a voice that was not his.

'Ach, the damned scoundrel.. the schweinehund.. he knew the business was going to the dogs, ach, schweinehund, schweinehund..' He paused. Less savage his thoughts turned to his losses. 'Two hundred shares he sold me… I paid a premium.. they vas to go to four.. ach, ach, ach… I'm in the cart.'

Gertie sniggered gently. The idiom had swamped the tragedy. Stein looked round at the sound. His face had gone leaden; his greasy plastered hair was all awry.

'Vat you laughing at, gn?' he asked savagely, suddenly resuming his managerial tone.

'Take it we're bust, ain't we?' said Gertie, stepping forward jauntily.

Stein lifted, then dropped one hand.

'Yes,' he said, 'bust.'

'Thank you for a week's wages, Mr Stein,' said Gertie, 'and I'll push off, if yer don't mind.'

Stein laughed harshly. With a theatrical movement he seized the cash drawer by the handle, drew it out and flung it on the floor. It was empty.

'Oh, that's 'ow it is,' said Gertie. 'You're a fine gentleman, I don't think. Bloomin' lot of skunks. What price that, mate?' she screamed addressing Bella, who still sat in her chair, her cheeks rising and falling like the sides of a cuttlefish. ''Ere's a fine go. Fellers comes along and tikes in poor girls like me and you and steals the bread outer their mouths. I'll 'ave yer run in, yer bloody foreigner.' She waved her fist in the man's face. 'For two pins,' she screamed, 'I'd smash yer fice, I'd..'

'Chuck it, Gertie,' said Lottie, suddenly taking her by the arm, 'don't you see he's got nothing to do with it?'

'Oh, indeed, Miss Mealymouth,' sneered Gertie, 'what I want is my money..'

'Leave him alone, Gertie,' said Victoria, 'you can't kick a man when he's down.'

Gertie looked as if she were about to explode. Then the problem became too big for her. In her little Cockney brain the question was insolubly revolving: 'Can you kick a man when he's down..? Can you kick..?'

Mr Stein passed his hand over his forehead. He was pulling himself together.

'Close de door, Cora,' he commanded. 'Now then, the company's bankrupt, there's nothing in the cashbox. You get the push… I get the push.' His voice broke slightly. His face twitched. 'You can go. Get another job.' He looked at Gertie.

'Put down your address. I give it to the police. You get something for wages.' He slowly turned away and sat down on a chair, his eyes fixed on the wall.

There was a repressed hubbub of talking. Then Gertie made the first move and went up to the change room. She came back a minute or two later in her long coat and large hat, carrying a parcel which none noticed as being rather large for a comb. It contained the company's cap and apron which, thought she, she might as well save from the wreck.

Gertie shook hands with Cora. 'See yer ter-night,' she said airily, 'same old place; 'bye Miss Prodgitt, 'ope "Force" 'll lift you out of this.' She shook hands with Victoria, a trifle coldly, kissed Lottie, threw one last malevolent look at Stein's back. The door closed behind her. She had passed out of the backwater into the main stream.

Lottie, a little self consciously, pulled down the pink blinds, in token of mourning. The 'Rosebud' hung broken on its stalk. Then, silently, she went up into the change room, followed by Cora; a pace behind came Victoria, all heavy with gloom. They dressed silently. Cora, without a word, kissed them both, collected her small possessions into a reticule, then shook hands with both and kissed them again. The door closed behind her. When Lottie and Victoria went down into the shop, Cora also had passed into the main stream. Gladys had gone with her.

The two girls hesitated for a moment as to whether they should speak to Stein. It was almost dark, for the October light was too weak to filter through the thick pink blinds. Lottie went up to the dark figure.

'Cheer up,' she said kindly, 'it's a long lane that has no turning.'

Stein looked up uncomprehendingly, then sank his head into his hands.

As Lottie and Victoria turned once more, the front door open behind them, all they saw was Bella Prodgitt, lymphatic as ever, motionless on her chair, like a watcher over the figure of the man silently mourning his last hopes.

As they passed into the street the fresh air quickened by the coming cold of winter, stung their blood to action. The autumn sunlight, pale like the faded gold of hair that age has silvered, threw faint shadows on the dry white pavements where little whirlwinds of dust chased and figured like swallows on the wing.

Lottie and Victoria walked quickly down the city streets. It was half-past eleven, a time when, the rush of the morning over, comparative emptiness awaits the coming of the midday crowds; every minute they were stopped by the blocks of drays and carriages which come in greater numbers in the road as men grow fewer on the pavements. The unaccustomed liberty of the hour did not strike them; for depression, a sense of impotence before fatality, was upon them. Indeed, they did not pause until they reached on the Embankment the spot where the two beautiful youths prepare to fasten on one another their grip of bronze. They sat down upon a seat and for a while remained silent.

'What are you going to do? Lottie?' asked Victoria.

'Look out for another job, of course,' said Lottie.

'In the same line?' said Victoria.

'I'll try that first,' replied Lottie, 'but you know I'm not particular. There's all sorts of shops. Nice soft little jobs at photographers, and manicuring showrooms, I don't mind.'

Victoria, with the leaden weight of former days pressing on her, envied Lottie's calm optimism. She seemed so capable. But so far as she herself was concerned, she did not feel sure that the 'other job' would so easily be found. Indeed the memory of her desperate hunt for work wrapped itself round her, cold as a shroud.

'But what if you can't get one,' she faltered.

'Oh, that'll be all right,' said Lottie, airily. 'I can live with my married sister for a bit, but I'll find a job somehow. That doesn't worry me. What are you thinking of?'

'I don't know,' said Victoria slowly, 'I must look out I suppose.'

'Hard up?' asked Lottie.

'No, not exactly,' said Victoria. 'I'm not rolling in wealth, you know, but I can manage.'

'Well, don't you go and get stranded or anything,' said Lottie. 'It doesn't do to be proud. It's not much I can do, but anyhow you let me know if – ' She paused. Victoria put her hand on hers.

'You're a bit of all right, Lottie,' she said softly, her feelings forming naturally into the language of her adopted class. For a few minutes the girls sat hand in hand.

'Well, I'd better be going,' said Lottie. 'I'm going to my married sister at Highgate first. Time enough to look about this afternoon.'

The two girls exchanged addresses. Victoria watched her friend's slim figure grow smaller and slimmer under her crown of pale hair, then almost fade away, merge into men and women and suddenly vanish at a turn, swallowed up. With a little shiver she got up and walked away quickly towards the west. She was lonely suddenly, horribly so. One by one, all the links of her worldly chain had snapped. Burton, the sensual brute, was gone; Stein was perhaps sitting still numb and silent in the darkened shop; Gertie, flippant and sharp, had sailed forth on life's ocean, there to be tossed like a cork and like a cork to swim; now Lottie was gone, cool and confident, to dangers underrated and unknown. She stood alone.

As she reached Westminster Bridge a strange sense of familiarity overwhelmed her. A well-known figure was there and it was horribly symbolical. It was the old vagrant of bygone days, sitting propped up against the parapet, clad in his filthy rags. From his short clay pipe, at long intervals, he puffed wreaths of smoke into the blue air.

CHAPTER XIX

The russet of October had turned into the bleak darkness of December. The threat of winter was in the air; it hissed and sizzled in the bare branches as they bent in the cold wind, shaking quivering drops of water broadcast as if sowing the seeds of pain. Victoria stopped for a moment on the threshold of the house in Star Street, looked up and down the road. It was black and sodden with wet; the pavement was greasy and glistening, flecked with cabbage stalks and orange peel. Then she looked across at the small shop where, though it was Sunday, a tailor sat cross-legged almost on a level with the street, painfully collecting with weary eyes the avaricious light. His back was bowed with habit; that and his bandy legs told of his life and revealed his being. In the street, when he had time to walk there, boys mocked his shuffling gate, thus paying popular tribute to the marks of honest toil.

Victoria stepped down to the pavement. A dragging sensation made her look at her right boot. The sole was parting from the upper, stitch by stitch. With something that was hardly a sigh Victoria put her foot down again and slowly walked away. She turned into Edgware Road, followed it northwards for a while, then doubled sharply back into Praed Street where she lingered awhile before an old curiosity shop. She looked between two prints into the shop where, in the darkness, she could see nothing. Yet she looked at nothingness for quite a long while. Then, listlessly, she followed the street, turned back through a square and stopped before a tiny chapel almost at the end of Star Street. The deity that follows with passionless eyes the wanderer in mean streets knew from her course that this woman had no errand; without emotion the Being snipped a few minutes from her earthly span.

By the side of the chapel sat an aged woman smothered in rags so many and so thick that she was passing well clad. She was hunched up on a camp stool, all string and bits of firewood. A small stove carrying an iron tray told that her trade was selling roasted chestnuts; nothing moved in the group; the old woman's face was brown and cracked as her own chestnuts and there was less life in her than in the warm scent of the roasting fruits which gratefully filled Victoria's nostrils.

The eight weeks which now separated Victoria from the old days at the 'Rosebud' had driven deeper yet into her soul her unimportance. She was powerless before the world; indeed, when she thought of it at all, she no longer likened herself to a cork tossed in the storm, but to a pebble sunken and motionless in the bed of a flowing river.

Upon the day which followed her sudden uprooting Victoria had bent her back to the task of finding work. She had known once more the despairing search through the advertisement columns of the Daily Telegraph, the skilful winnowing of chaff from wheat, sudden and then baffled hopes. Her new professional sense had taken her to the shops where young women are wanted to enhance the attraction of coffee and cigarettes. But the bankruptcy of the 'Rosebud' was not an isolated case. The dishonesty of Burton was not its cause but its consequence; the ship was sinking under his feet when he deserted it after loading himself with such booty as he could carry. Victoria had discovered grimly that the first result of a commercial crisis is the submerging of those whose labours create a commercial boom. Within a week of the 'Rosebud' disaster the eleven City cafés of the 'Lethe, Ltd.' had closed their doors. Two small failures in the West End were followed by a greater crash. The 'People's Restaurants, Ltd.', eaten out by the thousand depots of the 'Refreshment Rendezvous, Ltd.,' had filed a voluntary petition for liquidation; the official liquidator had at once inaugurated a policy of 'retrenchment and sound business management,' and, as a beginning, closed two hundred shops in the City and West End. He proposed to exploit the suburbs, and, after a triumphant amalgamation with the victorious 'Refreshment Rendezvous,' to retire from law into peaceful directorships and there collect innumerable guineas.

Victoria had followed the convulsion with passionate interest. For a week the restaurant slump had been the fashion. The manager of every surviving café in London had given it as his deliberate opinion that trade would be all the better for it. The financial papers published grave warnings as to the dangers of the restaurant business, to which the Stock Exchange promptly responded by marking up the prices of the survivors' shares. The Socialist papers had eloquently pleaded for government assistance for the two thousand odd displaced girls; a Cabinet Minister had marred his parliamentary reputation by endeavouring to satisfy one wing of his party that the tearoom at South Kensington Museum was not a Socialistic venture and the other wing that it was an institution leading up to State ownership of the trade. A girl discharged from the 'Lethe' had earned five guineas by writing a thousand words in a hated but largely read daily paper. The interest had been kept up by the rescue of a P.R. girl who had jumped off Waterloo Bridge. Another P.R. girl, fired by example, had been more successful in the Lea. This valuable advertisement enabled the Relief Fund to distribute five shillings a head to many young persons who had been waitresses at some time or another; there were rumours of a knighthood for its energetic promoter.

It was in the midst of this welter that Victoria had found herself cast, with her newly acquired experience a drug in the market, and all the world inclined to look upon her as a kind of adventuress. Her employer's failure was in a sense her failure, and she was handy to blame. For three weeks she had doggedly continued her search for work, applying first of all in the smart tea-rooms of the West, and every day she became more accustomed to being turned away. Her soul hardened to rebuffs as that of a beggar who learns to bear stoically the denial of alms. After vainly trying the best Victoria had tried the worst, but everywhere the story was the same. Every small restaurant keeper was drawing his horns in, feverishly casting up trial balances; some of them in their panic had damaged their credit by trying to arrange with their banks for overdrafts they would never need. The slump was such that they did not believe that the public would continue to eat and drink; they retrenched employees instead of trying to carve success out of other men's disasters.

Victoria, her teeth set, had faced the storm. She now explored districts and streets systematically, almost house by house. And when her spirit broke at the end of the week, as her perpetual walks, the buffeting of rain and wind soiled her clothing, broke breaches into her boots, chapped her hands as glove seams gave way, the only thing that could brace her up was the shrinkage of her hoard by a sovereign. She placed the coin on the mantlepiece after counting the remainder. Monday morning saw it reduced to eleven shillings and sixpence. When the crisis came she had taken in sail by exchanging into the second floor back, then fortunately vacant, thus saving three shillings in rent.

The sight of her melting capital was a horror which she faced only once a week, for at other times she thrust the thought away, but it intruded every time with greater insistence. Untrained still in economy she found it impossible to reduce her expenditure below a pound. After paying off the mortgage of eight and sixpence for her room and breakfast, she had to set aside three shillings for fares, for she dared not wade overmuch in the December mud. The manageress of a cafe lost in Marylebone had heard her kindly, but had looked at her boots plastered with mud, then at the dirty fringes of her petticoats and said, regretfully almost, that she would not do. That day had cost Victoria a pound almost wrenched out of the money drawer. But this wardrobe though an asset, was an incubus, and Victoria at times often hated it, for it cost so much in omnibus fares that she paid for it every day in food stolen from her body.

By the end of the seventh week Victoria had reduced her hoard to four pounds. She now applied for work like an automaton, often going twice to the same shop without realising it, at other times sitting for hours on a park seat until the drizzle oozed from her hair into her neck. At the end of the seventh week she had so lost consciousness of the world that she walked all through the Sunday gloom without food. Then, at eight o'clock, awakening suddenly to her need, she gorged herself with suet pudding at an eating house in the Edgware Road, came back to Star Street and fell into a heavy sleep.

About four she was aroused by horrible sickness which left her weak, every muscle relaxed and every nerve strained to breaking point. Shapes blacker than the night floated before her eyes; every passing milk cart rattled savagely through her beating temples; twitchings at her ankles and wrists, and the hurried beat of her heart shook the whole of her body. She almost writhed on her bed, up and down, as if forcibly thrown or goaded.

As the December dawn struggled through her window, diffusing over the white wall the light of the condemned cell, she could bear it no more. She got up, washed horrible bitterness from her mouth, clots from her eyes. Then, swaying with weariness and all her pulses beating, she strayed into the street, unseeing, her boots unbuttoned, into the daily struggle.

As the blind man unguided, or the poor on the march, she went into the East, now palely glowing over the chimney pots. She did not feel her weariness. Her feet did not belong to her; she felt as if her whole body were one gigantic wound vaguely aching under the chloroform. She walked without intention, and as towards no goal. At Oxford Circus she stopped. Her eye had unconsciously been arrested by the posters which the newsvendor was deftly glueing down on the pavement. The crude colours of the posters, red, green, yellow, shocked her sluggish mind into action. One spoke of a great reverse in Nubia; another repeated the information and added a football cup draw. A third poster, blazing red, struck such a blow at Victoria that, for a wild moment, her heart seemed to stop. It merely bore the words:

P. R

REOPENS

Victoria read the two lines five or six times, first dully, then in a whirl of emotion. Her blood seemed to go hot and tingle; the twitchings of her wrists and ankles grew insistent. With her heart pounding with excitement she asked for the paper in a choked voice, refusing the halfpenny change. Backing a step or two she opened the paper. A sheet dropped into the mud.

The newsvendor, grizzled and sunburnt right into the wrinkles, picked up the sheet and looked at her wonderingly. From the other side a corpulent policeman watched her with faint interest, reading her like a book. He did not need to be told that Victoria was out of work; her face showed that hope had come into her life.

Victoria read every detail greedily. The enterprising liquidator had carried through the amalgamation of the People's Restaurants and the Refreshment Rendezvous, and created the People's Refreshment Rendezvous. He had done this so quietly and suddenly that the effect was a thunderbolt. He had forestalled the decision of the Court, so that agreements had been ready and signed on the Saturday evening, while leave had obscurely been granted on the Friday. Being master of the situation the liquidator was re-opening fifty-five of the two hundred closed shops. The paper announced his boast that 'by ten o'clock on Monday morning fifty-five P. R. R.'s would be flying the flag of the scone and cross buns.' The paper also hailed this pronouncement as Napoleonic.

Victoria feverishly read the list of the rescued depots. They were mainly in Oxford Street and Bloomsbury. Indeed, one of them was in Princes Street. A flood of clarity seemed to come over Victoria's brain. It was impossible for the P. R. or P. R. R. or whatever it had become, to have secured a staff on the Sunday. No doubt they proposed to engage it on the spot and to rush the organisation into working order so as to capture at the outset the succès de curiosité which every London daily was beating up in the breast of a million idle men and women. Clutching the paper in her hand she ran across Oxford Street almost under the wheels of a motor lorry. She turned into Princes Street, and hurled herself against the familiar door, clutching at the handle.

There was another girl leaning against the door. She was tall and slim. Her fair hair went to sandiness. Her black coat was dusty and stained. Her large blue eyes started from her colourless face, pale lipped, hollow under the cheekbones. Victoria recovered her breath and put her hair straight feverishly. A short dark girl joined the group, pressing her body close against them. Then two more. Then, one by one, half a dozen. Victoria discovered that her boots were undone, and bent down to do them up with a hairpin. As she struggled with numb fingers her rivals pressed upon her with silent hostility. As she straightened herself, the throng suddenly thrust her away from the door. Victoria recovered herself and drove against them gritting her teeth. The fair girl was ground against her; but Victoria, full of her pain and bread lust, thrust her elbow twice into the girl's breast. She felt something like the rage of battle upon her and its joy as the bone entered the soft flesh like a weapon.

'Now then, steady girls,' said the voice of the policeman, faint like a dream voice.

'Blime, ain't they a 'ot lot!' said another dream voice, a loafer's.

The crowd once more became orderly. Though quite a hundred girls had now collected hardly any spoke. In every face there was tenseness, though the front ranks showed most ferocity in their eyes and the late-comers most weariness.

'Where you shovin'?' asked a sulky voice.

There was a mutter that might have been a curse. Then silence once more; and the girls fiercely watched for their bread, looking right and left like suspicious dogs. A spruce young warehouseman slowly reviewed the girls and allowed his eyes to linger approvingly on one or two. He winked approvingly at the fair girl but she did not respond. She stood flat against the door, every inch of her body spread so as to occupy as much space as she could.

Then, half-past seven, a young man and a middle-aged woman shouldering through the wedged mass, the fierce rush into the shop and there the gasp behind closed doors among the other winners, hatless, their clothes torn, their bodices ripped open to the stays, one with her hair down and her neck marked here and there by bleeding scratches. Then, after the turmoil of the day among the strangeness, without rest or food, to make holiday for the Londoners, a night heavy as lead and a week every day more mechanical, Victoria had returned to the treadmill and, within a week, knew it.

… The clock struck five. Victoria awoke from her dream epic. She had won her battle and sailed into harbour. Its waters were already as horribly still as those of a stagnant pool. The old chestnut vendor sat motionless on her seat of firewood and string. Not a thought chased over her gnarled brown face. From the stove came the faint pungent smell of the charring peel.